It was another mega edition of new runners at GoodGym Bristol tonight - it was great to have Vicki, Maria, Tom, Rosie, Sophie and David join us for the first time, as well as some of the Team GB GoodGym event runners come and join us for a regular session.

To match this huge number we also had three tasks to complete tonight. We got warmed up with a game of the playground-classic, Toilet Tig, then split into three groups, with Maria and Mel run and walk leading - thank you both!

Toilet humour

The warm-up was fitting to get Mel's group ready for their task, as they were heading on a walk/run group back to the Southville Centre. After we had given their toilets a first lick of paint last week, our crafty walkers and runners got to work putting all hands on deck to give it a second coat. Even though some people were said to be loos-ing the plot (thanks Mel), the bathrooms were soon looking glossier in their sleek gray (the latest colour trend, of course).

Loos-ing the Plot

Meanwhile, Maria led a group of 10 on a longer 9km run to help the Matthew Tree Project at their gardening allotment plot. The group took the hill up there in their stride and arrived ready to tackle the work to be done. Rosa set the team to their tasks of composting, weeding and picking tomatoes. Not only did they get to use wheelbarrows, they also got a great view of Bristol as dusk fell!

Crate burpees

The rest of the group headed off to Easton to help East Bristol Foodbank. They have just had their recent delivery of supermarket collection donations and we were doing our regular task of sorting them into different categories so they can be easily distributed to people in need. Andy from the food bank said that our half an hour session with them had saved their regular volunteers 3-4 hours of work! Wow.

As we were such a big group, we split into two groups, with half working and half doing The Centurion Burpee Challenge at any one time. This was created specially for this evening's centurion, Alice, but she had managed to sneak off into the toilet crew so everyone had to do her burpees for her. The two groups smashed it, with the winning teams making it to the top of Victorious Hill in 5 minutes and 4 minutes respectively.

After all of this, we headed back to Queen Square to reunite the groups and to crown Alice with her celebratory Centurion outfit and the latest addition of the UniHorn, which centurions now have to ride around the circle, while galloping, holding their shield and high-fiving all the rest of the GoodGymers. Some say it is harder than doing all of the 100 deeds put together. Massive well done Alice - you are amazing!

To prove her amazingness to us all even more, Alice had baked DELICIOUS celebratory scones which she militantly guarded until people proved that they were eating them the Cornish way. Stay true to your routes, girl.

Pun credit to Matt and Mel, who are way funnier than me

It was great to have Sophie, Fiona, Lydia, Shrey, Grace, Johanna and Rahul join us for the first time tonight on another busy evening with lots of people joining us as part of Week 2 of the Bristol SU's Mind Your Head campaign.

Before we got going we had a long list of well dones for this active crowd who had been running around the country over the bank holiday and were feeling tired tonight for very different reasons to why I did. Not only that, but we got to celebrate Paul's birthday and 5 Year Group Run Streak!

Art Attack

Then we split into two groups for tonight's good deeds. Alice wonderfully led a group to Southville to do some last minute awareness raising for this weekend's Southville Art Fair on behalf of BS3 Community. It turned into quite the social affair as several GoodGymers bumped into people they knew along the way and from behind the letterboxes! Before long the group had distributed the pile of hundreds of leaflets and made a massive difference for the group ahead of Saturday's event.

Camouflage

The rest of us headed to Holy Trinity church is Hotwells where we were helping Redcliffe and Hotwells Development Group with various tasks. The main task for the night was clearing an extremely overgrown area to create an area for a vegetable patch for the local gardening group to use. As this area is often used for anti-social behaviour then this will have a big impact on the local area. The group also did an incredible job of lopping back all the brambles, branches, weeds and nettles sticking over the pathway to the side of the church, deweeding the path itself (including lifting a massive moss jacket which Liam made look like an outfit from last night's Met Gala and was rivalled only by Shreena's weed-dress), refreshing the raised beds for the summer and putting a new raised bed in place (by Team Strong). Not only this, but some of the group also made a crack at delivering some of their 900 leaflets advertising the gardening club and other activities happening in the area.

In 30 minutes all of these tasks had been completed beyond Suzanne from the charity's expectations. We had time for juice and biscuits before hitting the road, with a cheeky plank stop and sprint home to spice things up on the way.

We headed back and then celebrated May's GoodGym Eats with pizza and cider at The Stable - thank you to Danica for organising!

Suns out, run out

We had 7 new runners join us tonight and 52 people out Good Deeding on this sunny Tuesday night. Welcome to Bex, Molly, Jayne, Sangrita, Laura, Andreas and Hannah - it was great to have you!

After a mental warm-up, we split into two groups.

Alison led a small group of 15 to Dame Emily Park where they met Mel to add to their team and Ursula who runs the project. The boys (under the (quickly corrected) assumption that they were stronger) were handed spades and a pick axe to put some shrubs in to create a border between the border and the Caretaker's house. The rest of the group tackled the planters outside the swimming pool, planting new trees and small flowers in them. Another group were sent to seed wildflowers at the bottom edge of the park and two others filled watering cans to water everything in. Meanwhile, Darren was working especially hard by keeping Ursula's little boy entertained in a football game - someone's gotta do it, isn't that right Darren?!

An elephant of sand

The rest of us headed off in our hoards to St Paul's Adventure Playground. We were met by Guy who had three huge tasks for the group - good job who brought so many pairs of hands. Group 1 were set to work with moving hay to make a soft landing under the zipline and play areas. Group 2 were moving large logs to a log store on the other side of the playground, which involved impressive log-carrying coordination (I have seen groups doing it worse in Highland Games). Group 3 had the mammoth task of moving a massive pile of cement blocks and two tonnes of sand to clear a space for the bread oven arriving tomorrow. It was hefty work and the team made the longest GoodGym human chain ever to overcome the task. The last bag of sand was moved with seconds to spare before we had to head back and Guy was thrilled with how much we had got done.

Shell shock

The group were not getting away to feast on Lisa's amazing 200 celebration baking without finishing off the night with an egg and spoon race. With only 2 drops (and consequent burpees) it turns out this might be our calling. Then it was time to celebrate the wonderful [Lisa] hitting her 200th Good Deed last Saturday - well done Lisa! Still drooling over those cakes...

And at least I've not cracked all my best egg jokes before the end of the report.